Talk Me Down
by gibbsheroic27
Summary: The tallest building in Ballarat is eight stories. Charlie knows this from the moment he first arrives in town. Warning: deals with themes of suicide and attempted suicide.


A/N: This is dedicated to the brilliant miss-nettles-wife, and her amazing fic "Deathdefying!", which inspired this fic.

Warnings: Contains themes of suicide, some gore, some morbid or slightly inappropriate humour. I mean no offense to anyone by any of the content in this fic, however be aware that it does deal with rather sensitive issues.

When Charlie Davis is eight years old, his father jumps off their narrow apartment balcony. The fall is just low enough for him to still be somewhat alive when Charlie pounds up the pavement to his side, his small legs aching like pistons as he slips in the red wetness coating the sidewalk near his father's head.

"Da?" Charlie has always been informed he is a serious lad, something which he looked up in the dictionary before shrugging and deciding if everyone else has already decided something about him without asking, he might as well not disappoint them. It's a pattern that continues to follow him far longer than he would wish.

A faint gurgling sound meets his small ears, matching the spasmodic twitching of his father's twisted fingers as they brush the edges of Charlie's small, hesitant grip.

"Dad?" Charlie's voice pitches high enough he feels it crack in his throat, the pain distracting him from the sudden stillness running under his sticky palms.

"Dad!" Charlie hears footsteps pounding along the pavement behind him, and feels a sudden, uncharacteristic burst of anger in his chest because his parents were arguing about something stupid, nonsensical and crazy and his mother said why don't you just kill yourself then and Charlie might be young enough that he still has to look big words up in the dictionary but he knows that promptly jumping out the nearest window isn't a remotely normal response to a throw away remark like that, his mother still hasn't come down from their apartment and his father just stopped breathing and all the useless, useless people gathering around them can think to say is, "My god, did you see that, that fellow must have fallen a good eight stories!"

The next morning Charlie wakes up to find his mother has followed his father out the same window. This time, she's stopped breathing by the time he gets down there. The useless folk form earlier have the decency to keep their remarks to themselves this time.

The ladies at the Home let Charlie go to the double funeral. He doesn't cry. He thinks he might want to, because he misses them, his parents, for all that he's glad to not be hungry anymore, to not have to go to bed with his hands pressed over his ears to shut out the shouting. He thinks he might like to have cried at their funeral all the same though. They were his parents after all. He's never going to get another set of those.

But he's a serious lad, or so the ladies at the Home tell him. So he doesn't cry. He wouldn't want to disappoint them.

CBCB

Charlie has one friend at the orphanage. Myrtle Lions. He meets her his first day there, eleven years old and fresh from a Home on the other side of Melbourne. Charlie privately wonders if they just shuffle the kids around to try their luck with a fresh set of prospective buyers, new merchandise and all that. By eleven, Charlie is five foster homes and one near adoption past being bitter.

It also happens to be Myrtle's thirteenth birthday, and to Charlie's knowledge, it's the first time she tries to kill herself in her life.

He's eternally grateful she doesn't try to jump off a building. It's not so much that he's afraid of heights exactly, but he's never stopped associating them with copious amounts of blood and death and hollow pain that never really heals, so he's not exactly a fan of them either.

She chooses the infinitely quieter and easier route of swiping matron's pills and attempting to dry swallow the entire bottle. Charlie finds her choking on the first handful, his suitcase still clasped firmly in one small hand.

A few good thumps on the back, some sleight of hand, creative lying to matron, and a brief introduction and suddenly he has a friend.

He gets to keep her for precisely two years, when her fifteenth birthday falls on a Sunday and he accidentally sleeps in an hour too late to prevent her succeeding in swallowing two bottles of the same pills. She was smarter and used water this time.

Watching a sheet be drawn over her head, it occurs to Charlie that he never even found out why she hated her birthday enough to want to die on it.

It's a long, long time before he realizes that choosing to attempt to follow in her footsteps was the very last way he could possibly have honoured her memory.

CBCB

Charlie leaves the orphanage on the morning of his eighteenth birthday and finds the nearest tall building. He climbs precisely eight stories up and hangs part way out of the window in contemplation of the ground, images of blood and sounds of pained gurgling filling his ears like a sheet has been pulled over his face and muted out the outside world.

He's been there nearly two hours before someone bothers to notice him, the distant shouting barely permeating his brain at all. He's still partly submerged in another time when he comes around enough to notice precisely how far out of the window he's slid. Charlie contemplates the ground for a second more, before pulling himself back inside and slamming the hall window frame down hard enough to rattle.

He signs up for the police force the next day.

CBCB

Her name was Susan Collins. She was nineteen years old, already nearly a year older than little Charlie Davis, on the force for less than two months and so wet behind the ears that he is far from surprised when his first Super is eventually arrested for incompetence, apparently you actually can be arrested for that when it gets enough people killed, because who on earth would send out the most junior officer in the station, and only the most junior officer, to try and talk someone off a building.

Charlie's at least reasonably sure that the man knows nothing of his personal history, which makes this entirely an act of stupidity and callousness rather than malice, but that doesn't much help either him or the "just another fucking jumper" he's currently attempting to edge quietly towards from a sort of right angle.

"Susan?" Charlie wasn't there when his mother jumped, ran into the room moments before Myrtle finished swallowing that last bottle of pills, was too young to realize what his father was about to do before he did it, so he's pretty much flying blind here.

Except he's not, because he's a serious young man his sergeant informs him, and as such he's been over those scenes again and again in his mind for years, what he would have done differently if he was there, how he would have saved them, how he would have at least tried.

Talking only features in the solution to his mother's case, the one that still somehow haunts him even more than his father's death with all its suddenness and gore.

Charlie always likes to think he gets somewhere that day, that somehow, in some small way he was starting to get through to little Susie Collins, heartbroken over her boyfriend's death in a stupid accident and carrying more guilt that most people her age ever should. Charlie knows just how she feels.

He's standing six inches too far from being able to stretch out a hand and touch her when she jumps, startled into a stumble by the arrival of his backup of all the stupid things.

He's too cowardly to watch her fall. He isn't able to shut his ears against the resulting splattering crunch.

His backup consists of a senior detective, watching him fall apart with cold grey eyes. Charlie hates William Munro on sight. It is an opinion he never has occasion to change.

CBCB

Lucien Blake trips Charlie down a staircase the first time he meets him. He wants so badly to hate him for that. He tries it for a while, can only really hold out about half a day before the whole thing crumbles into a dusting of respect that is turning into love with an alarming rapidity before he really knows what's happening.

It isn't truly until Charlie's standing on an old and slightly crumbling bridge watching Blake attempt to talk a boy that Charlie barely has a decade on, maybe, from stepping off the edge and taking Blake with him, that he realizes just how far in over his head he is.

Charlie's been assigned to exactly six jumpers in the years since little Susie Collins broke every bone in her body, including her neck and skull in six places, and didn't live to tell the tale. None of the others lived to tell the tale either. Somehow, holding a little girl protectively against his side, her brother hovering between the choice of life or the escape of death, threatening however indirectly to take away a man Charlie's just realized he can't bear to lose, Charlie feels every one of those losses all the keener.

The urge to hug Blake is almost as powerful as the urge to shake him the moment he succeeds where Charlie failed so bitterly, so many times. He's a good cop though, so he does neither.

He isn't really surprised Blake succeeded. Lucien Blake will always be hands down the bravest man Charlie Davis has ever met.

CBCB

"Do you reckon suicide could be genetic Doc?" Charlie's head lolls slightly against the brick surface he's pressed against, his toes wobbling alarmingly along the edge of the rapidly getting thinner ledge he's casually leaning back on, whiskey bottle hanging near empty from limpish fingers, his other hand tapping out some rhythm he can't remember the name of aimlessly into the brick. He finds it oddly soothing, little sparks of pain from the rough edges mingling nicely with the muted tapping sounds generated by his knuckles.

The slight pause is enough to spark some minor interest in Charlie, enough for him to loll his head back the other way, idly taking in Blake's tense but still posture, his poised carefulness from his perch a dozen feet to Charlie's right, as close as he's managed to get in the scant minutes since a frantic call from Hobart of all people sent him careening out his front door towards the center of Ballarat. Lucien weighs his answer for another minute, allowing the rather frantic curse of "Where the hell is Matthew" to run silently through his head for the tenth time in as many minutes, although he's not entirely sure how Matthew's supposed to help with any of this in the first place, and how the hell hadn't they seen this coming anyway?

A scuffing sound drags Blake forcefully into the present, as Charlie's right foot wobbles dangerously closer to the edge. Lucien feels his right hand extend a foot closer to Charlie almost of its own volition, even as a hurried answer finds its desperate path to his lips and out into the frigid winter air. If they don't get Charlie off that ledge soon, pneumonia might be the least of their problems he knows.

"I don't know Charlie, can't say I've ever given it much thought before." Charlie's chuckle seems to slice the air in two, it's that bitter. "I thought there wasn't anything you hadn't given some thought to Doc, you being a genius and all."

Lucien feels his throat begin to close, distantly realizing the thing stealing his airway is fear, fear like he hasn't felt since 1933. "I never said I was a genius Charlie."

Bleak grey eyes meet his with just enough finality that the words make him lunge a couple feet forward in alarm. "You didn't have to Doc." Charlie's right hand detaches from the wall in the same instant Lucien's finds the very edge of the brick. "Don't." The tone is more command than anything else, hard and brittle and stubborn to the core. It freezes Lucien in his tracks.

It freezes everything but the greatest and most impotent weapon man has ever possessed. His voice. "Charlie…don't. Please." Lucien hasn't begged for anything since the war, his war, the war that began a good half decade before the official one, and has never truly ended. "Charlie, please, just wait. Just stay here with me. Please."

Grey eyes slide away from him in an almost guilty expression, sloshing sounds drowning out Blake's harsh breathing as Charlie contemplates the whiskey bottle clasped in his left hand.

"My father used to call me Charles you know. Only called me Charlie once that I can recall, right before he jumped out the window. Stupid really Doc, him and mum were arguing sure, but they always argued. And then one day, he just ups and jumps out the window, just like that. Why would he do that Doc?"

"I don't know Charlie." Lucien hopes his voice doesn't sound as horrified as he feels. Lucien has always believed that people are genuinely worth saving, no matter what they've done, but he sometimes thinks some parents would make him make an exception to that belief. Charlie's father just made it to the top of that list.

He expects the bark of despairing laughter, but not the bitter outpouring that follows it.  
"Well you might not know Doc, but I do. Munro called my father a hero, did you know that." Charlie's gaze locks on his with enough presumptive command that Blake finds himself nodding by reflex alone. He's mildly encouraged when that gaze doesn't break even as the words continue their bitter path forth into the frigid air.

"I remembered then you see, I remembered what they were arguing about. I remembered that it was 1942, my Da had just gotten his conscription notice, and he was afraid. So mum called him a coward and said why don't you just kill yourself already. So he did. Right there, right in front of us. What does that make him Doc?"

Blake swallows hard, because he knows the answer Charlie expects, of course he does, but he somehow can't make himself say it, not now, not with the boy of that man who killed himself rather than serve his country in a war that Lucien is still being destroyed by, little by little each day, staring at him with pain filled eyes from the edge of the tallest building in downtown Ballarat.

Apparently Charlie is quite happy to do all the talking for once, because he's rather quick in picking up the slack Lucien's hesitation has provided him with.

"Well I do. It makes him a coward, that's what. Munro said he was a hero, but he was nothing but a good for nothing coward." Charlie throws the word out like a curse, and somehow Blake knows where this is going, the sinking feeling in his chest taking an abrupt nosedive ever lower.

"Do you think I'm a coward Lucien?" The abrupt change of address is almost enough to distract Blake from the tensing of Charlie's body. Almost, but not quite.

Lucien Blake has done many crazy, insane, and according to other people quite amazingly brave, things in his life, but even he wasn't aware he could move as fast as he does in those few moments following Charlie Davis' attempt to end his bitterly short and bitterly sad story on the eighth floor of the tallest building in Ballarat.

For a moment, the afterimage of Charlie disappearing over the edge of the parapet a burning scar on his corneas that will never entirely fade, for just a moment, half thrown off the edge himself in a desperate grab at seemingly nothing but air, the vaguest sounds of the roof door banging open creakily and the rather out of place thought of "It's about time Matthew" echoing around his skull, for the briefest and yet somehow longest moment of his life, Lucien thinks he failed.

Then sweet reality crashes back into the nightmare that is their lives on the best of good days, and feeling returns to his burning arms, his left clutching madly at the gravel under his legs, bracing against a rapidly slipping traction, his right throbbing in time to the spasmodic feel of fingers desperately attempting to break from his iron grip. Lucien grits his teeth, his eyes pressed firmly shut, too scared to look he'll freely admit, his grip tightening to the point of cutting off blood circulation to their joined hands, throwing his weight deftly backwards in a vain attempt to leverage the resisting and yet surprisingly docile and amazingly still alive body of Charlie Davis back from oblivion onto the fake safety of the roof top above them.

The sound of a bottle faintly smashing far below them is the only indication Blake has to realize that time must have somehow slowed down, either that or Matthew just became the fastest man in the world because it's been scant seconds somehow since Charlie attempted to throw himself to his untimely demise, which coincided bleakly with Lawson's arrival at the roof top door, which is on the opposite end of this surprisingly long building's roof, naturally, and yet somehow deft hands are gripping Lucien firmly around the middle of his waistcoat, adding the needed leverage on the slippery gravel for the final push back from the edge, the three of them ending in a sprawling but bloodless mess on an unforgiving bed of gravel that Blake considers kissing briefly because he could swear it's the softest thing he's ever felt in his life.

Muffled sobs punctuate Blake's breathless gasps like an odd disharmony to Lawson's harsh intakes of air. Lucien realizes vaguely that his grip on Charlie has somehow transformed into a near cement-like embrace, the young man sobbing helpless into his front, Lawson welded to Charlie's back like the other half of a rather demented sandwich.

It takes them both exactly a moment to realize Charlie is saying something, mumbling the same words over and over until he seems to scarcely pause for breath, but Lucien's gaze locks with Matthew's in the exact instant that they both fully register what is being said, the litany of desperate "I'm sorry's" mingling with the rain that has just started, droplets falling thick and strong down all their faces, soaking into Blake's favourite Sunday suit coat before spilling around the edges of the roof like the heavens themselves are crying.

CBCB

It took Lucien Blake fourteen years to come home from the war, and yet for every day he spends in the town where he grew up, he feels even more like he never truly left the war behind.

Saving Charlie Davis' life is not the longest war he's ever fought, nor even perhaps the hardest. It certainly isn't the easiest either. Most days, Lucien feels lucky if he wins a small skirmish, let alone a whole battle.

It's a Sunday in early April, Charlie's twenty seventh birthday, two years to the day since Lucien chased him to the top of the tallest building in Ballarat.

It's not the tallest building anymore, an ambitious investor moving in and hiring an architect to build a rather unpopular, and probably ridiculously unsafe, ten story apartment block that still lies empty nearly a year after construction was completed.

Blake finds Charlie on the top of the roof, ten floors up, standing a good three feet back from the edge, nearly the exact distance that Lawson dragged them from the edge of the building Blake can just make out in the distance across town, exactly two years earlier.

Charlie doesn't acknowledge his presence, much like back then. He just shifts his weight slightly to his left leg, away from the knee that he somehow hit hard enough in the three feet he actually fell off that roof to leave them all with a permanent reminder of that day. Blake's forever grateful that that is the only permanent scar left, visible to the naked eye or not.

They've talked about it of course. Part of Lawson agreeing to creatively lie Charlie out of a sectioning straight off that roof into a psychiatric hospital was the promise that he would talk to Blake about everything. All of it, the good and the bad and the ugly. Another part of it stemmed from Blake and Matthew's shared disdain for the state of mental health care facilities in Australia as a whole, but that was neither here nor there in the end, because Charlie Davis has always been a man of his word.

As a result, Lucien knows about just about all of it now, everything that makes Charlie Davis Charlie Davis, about his parents, about Myrtle and the Home, about little Susie Collins and his corrupt Super, about Munro's snakey eyes and chilling sense of timing.

Knows that Charlie's father was twenty-five years old to the day when he jumped off the eighth floor of a squalid tenement in the poorer part of Melbourne. The same age Charlie was when Lucien Blake caught him trying to follow in his father's footsteps like the good son he's always tried to be.

Lucien Blake now knows the story of a little boy who had a wicked sense of humour, a little boy who loved to laugh because it made his mother happy. A little boy who was told he was serious one too many times, until he started to believe it himself. A little boy who grew up to be Charlie Davis.

Lucien shifts his weight subtly as a quiet sound echoes through the air, police shoes squeaking on fresh gravel, Lawson a quiet but watchful presence at their backs. It's been nearly a year since Lucien has truly worried about Charlie going places by himself, but he suspects this anniversary will always be a bit different. And he doubts rooftops will ever not alarm him after that bleak evening two years before.

Charlie's gaze slides suddenly from his contemplation of the thinning grey clouds above their heads, his eyes the colour of the sky as he meets Blake's steady gaze.

Déjà vu practically tangible between them, Charlie shuffles slightly forward, Blake's mirroring of his movements eliciting a gentle upturn of Charlie's lips. It occurs to Lucien that for all the healing they've both done in the last few years, he's never truly seen Charlie smile. Not really.

"Do you think I'm a coward Doc?" The question sends more of a thrill of fear through Lucien then he suspects it should after all this time, the sound of Matthew taking a good few strides closer as a testament to just how many of those conversations in the last two years he's been a party to blurring perfectly in time with Lucien's hurried closing of the distance separating him from Charlie, his right hand clamping reassuringly over an unresisting wrist.

Charlie's lips twitch up just a smidgeon more and Blake feels something unfurl just slightly in his chest in response.

Lucien takes a steading breath, and fills the last silence that lies unspoken between them. "I tried to kill myself once you know Charlie." He says it just like that, simple and matter of fact, as if it isn't a revelation to both occupants of this rain slick, lonely rooftop. Lucien stares resolutely at the already crumbling railings a good few feet in from of him, steadfastly ignoring the sudden hitching of two sets of breaths. "I'd just gotten a letter from my daughter, asking me not to contact her again, and I realize this is a tad melodramatic, but suddenly swallowing my entire drinks cabinet seemed like a good coward's way out."

Blake feels Charlie's suddenly tense form bracing to protest his use of that particular adjective, and forges on valiantly, his left hand raised to ask for silence. He's not the least bit surprised when Charlie grants it to him.

"I got about two drinks in before something stopped me. Can you guess what that was Charlie?" Charlie's close enough now that Lucien actively feels the displacement of air caused by his vigorous headshake, but Charlie still chokes out a slightly brokenly spunky, "no idea Doc."

He's a lot less serious than he used to be these days. Lucien allows himself the barest hint of a smile before rushing to end what he's begun. The answer is painfully simple anyway. And yet not.

"The telephone rang." Lucien's hand is already up in a gesture of patience as Matthew huffs an incredulous laugh behind them. "But that's not what stopped me Charlie, not really, not properly." He turns his head to meet Charlie's wide and uncertain eyes, drawing strength from the wells of liquid he finds there.

"You see Charlie, that call reminded me that there were still things I needed to do, still people who needed me, still people I could try to save, for all those I had already failed. And that realization came down to one man, and it wasn't the one that phoned, I can certainly tell you that." Lucien hears Matthew's quiet "thank fuck for that" and allows himself a deep, nearly silent chuckle at their shared knowledge that Bill Hobart is the last person on earth anyone would be willing to attribute their salvation to.

Lucien's voice takes on a deliberately challenging note. "Now Charlie, can you guess who that person might be?"

Two years ago, Charlie would have said he wasn't in the mood for games, but that was two years ago. Now, he just clears his throat hoarsely, edges closer still to Blake, and waits him out.

It's an admittedly short pause. "His name was Charlie Davis, and he's the bravest man I know." Lucien turns his head abruptly when a half-muffled choking sound mets his ears, realizing belatedly that the noise could be attributed to Matthew Lawson proving he had the ability to cry in front of others, a realization that was admittedly rather distant-and not really at all startling anyway-taking a backseat as it did to the sight before his riveted gaze.

It's slow, careful, but somehow as spontaneous as the sudden break in the clouds above their heads. For the first time since Lucien Blake met him, Charlie Davis is smiling, as brilliantly and warmly as the sun. Lucien thinks it's the most beautiful sight he's ever seen.

Watching Lucien Blake and Matthew Lawson gaze at him as if he's just emerged victorious from slaying a dragon, Charlie feels something that froze in his chest when it was much smaller and lighter slowly unfurl and take flight. And for the first time since his father's death, little Charlie Davis looks out across the distance spread out below his feet, and feels nothing. Not even fear.

CBCB

The next year, after the recently founded Myrtle Lions orphans fund celebrates its second anniversary by purchasing the tallest building in town for the site of the town orphanage, Lucien takes their whole family up to the roof for a picnic. Charlie sits on the edge of the roof and swings his legs merrily in the breeze, Blake a reassuring weight against his right shoulder.

Charlie pauses on the eighth floor landing on their way home, gazing at the far window for just a second, before bringing serious grey eyes to bear on the man standing rock solid behind him. "I'm twenty eight today Doc."

Lucien Blake's smile is the most beautiful thing Charlie has ever seen.


End file.
